Hard lessons learned are part of Ice Storm's enduring legacy

CTV Montreal: Ice storm lessons The ice storm of 1998 plunged Quebecers into the dark for weeks with a billion in damage to Hydro Quebec equipment. Could it happen again?

For part one of our special twentieth anniversay Ice Storm coverage, click here. 

As the infamous Ice Storm ravaged Quebec, the province went dark – literally. Two decades later, steps have been taken to limit the damage should a natural disaster strike again but experts say that, while remote, there are chances another such storm could one day hit.

Over the course of six days in 1998, 100 millimetres of freezing rain and ice pellets pounded the province, weather unprecedented in Quebec’s history,” according to Environment Canada meteorologist Alexandre Parent.

“That pattern of cold air with warm rain above stayed stagnant for five days, that was never seen before,” he said.

At the time, Parent was a first-year student at McGill University, studying atmospheric science. He remembers almost being hit by a falling tree while on his way to class. But there was something else he remembers that was more disturbing.

“A few minutes later, I heard thunder,” he said. “Thunder and freezing rain are not supposed to be together on the same day – rarely in the same season. So that really struck me.”

By the end of the six days, the equivalent of three winters worth of freezing rain had hit Montreal.

“The 1998 event is really an extreme, there’s not even a close second place,” said Parent. “It’s not really something you could plan for because it was never observed before.”

The weather wreaked havoc on the province’s infrastructure. All bridges leading to Montreal were closed due to the ice.

“Our focus at the time was to try to reopen the birdges ASAP, but in order to allow safe passage, we had to remove the ice as quickly as possible,” said Glen Carlin, CEO of the Jacques Cartier and Champlain Bridge Inc.

It was a task made almost impossible without electricity – as Hydro crews scrambled to restore power to the millions of clients, works crews on the bridge also had no electricity, other than a single generator in the bridge’s control centre. It was barely enough to keep the men tasked with removing the ice warm as they slept in shifts.

Carlin said that the JCCBI learned valuable lessons from the disaster.

“Since that time, we’ve realized our weakness was not having enough backup electrical power, so now we have more powerful generators,” he said.

The bridge authorities weren’t the only ones who had to learn the hard way. Hydro-Quebec electrical engineer Marie-Eve Grenier was a university student when the Ice Storm struck. She lived in what became known as the “Triangle of Darkness,” the area south of Montreal that suffered the most. Grenier went 14 days without power.

“Since 1998, a lot of investment has been made on the transmission system and it’s much more robust today than it was back then,” she said.

After the storm, the company strengthened its towers and transmission lines to limit the domino effect that struck so disastrously in 1998. They’ve also added a new high capacity line to the Eastern Townships and strengthened connections to the Outaouais region.

In total, Grenier said the changes have made Hydro’s network more complex.

“We have a Montreal loop so that the electricity can come from both paths,” she said.

Hydro-Quebec developed new technology at its research centre in Varennes, aimed at protecting the network from wind and ice. Still, despite $1 billion in improvements to the system, Grenier admitted Hydro can never be totally immune to natural disaster.

“If we had a severe storm, it would not have as severe an effect on the system,” she said.

As for the chances of such a storm, a 2010 Environment Canada study on climate change scenarios concluded there is a likelihood that Quebec could face more frequent episodes of freezing rain.

“That being said, having a few more hours of freezing rain doesn’t mean increasing the probability of having a storm like we experienced in 1998,” said Parent. “It’s a once in every hundred or few hundred years (thing). So, in our lifetime, there’s a very low chance, let’s put it that way.”